Medicine
by kittynightterrors
Summary: Hizashi knew he would have to work harder to be a Pro than most. So he took on three jobs, to prove to the world that he could do it. That he wasn't defective, that he could best his stupid fucking brain.


Knowing from a young age that something was wrong with you was a strange feeling, especially when the people who were supposed to take care of you didn't do their job. In the age of the internet it was easy for Hizashi to look up how he was feeling and go "hey, mom, dad, I think I have ADHD." They agreed he did, but they never took him to the doctor for it.

"_If we make this official, you'll never be a hero."_

He wanted to be a hero so, so bad. So, he stopped trying to fix his brain. It was hard, his grades went from being great to being not so good. The classes he cared about, he would excel in. He could lose himself in an English paper, to the point of forgetting to eat. And when it came to the subjects he just didn't care about, it wasn't that he was bad at them, he just didn't care. He was smart, but he just didn't apply himself.

"_Hizashi, if you would stop listening to that damn music, you could get into any Imperial University you wanted!"_

But, he didn't want to get into some big Imperial University, he hadn't even been sure he wanted to go to college. Shouta and Nemuri pushed him to apply to something small, but respectable, and together the three of them worked on Hizashi being a semi functioning person. Alarms and check ins helped him eat and sleep properly. It was nice. College saw a huge shift in his grades, given that he could actually pick what he wanted to take. His attention was constantly captivated, and he went from borderline failing to honors. It was nice, like maybe his stupid brain wouldn't get the best of him.

This improvement landed him a semester abroad in America. College was so different over there than in Japan. Parties were everywhere, and Hizashi was sitting on the fence of joining that life style. The loud music, the flashing lights, it was more his style than anything back home. Out in America he picked up a side job DJing for small little house parties. People paid him to play music and run his mouth, it was the dream! The party scene had its downfalls though: namely drugs. Weed, fantastic, amazing, everyone who wanted to should be able to smoke it! Alcohol, eh, take it or leave it. Ecstasy, after doing his research, he had become so picky about the stuff he never did it. Adderall though, that had been something else. The only thing he knew about the stuff was it was very, very illegal back home. Americans were often detained for having a legitimate prescription of the stuff. His friends had told him it was a lot like coke, just legal coke.

"_You'll feel great. And studying will go by so quick."_

Except, he didn't feel great and studying didn't go by very quickly. He had watched everyone bump the pill and decided to follow suit. Everyone at the party was having fun, geeked out of their mind. And he just sat there with a mild headache from snorting a pill. This amazing, finals enhancing drug did nothing for him.

"_How ya feelin' Zash?"_

"_Like I have a headache?"_

"_...Dumbass, do you have ADD?"_

Oh… There went his brain ruining everything again. Before leaving America, he had gone to his college's psychiatric facilities to try to get a concrete answer about his ADHD. What he got was… enough. A yes without it being explicit.

"_Technically, I can't diagnose you, but I can screen you. At this school, you need a diagnosis to get meds. Outside of the school, this screening is all you need to get a prescription."_

The person he had seen had been kind enough to not make anything official without Hizashi's say so. Not with how mental illness was still seen in the world. For such an advanced society, the hero world still held many old stigmas that should have died away a long time ago. Mental illness was still such a messy topic that most agencies would rather ignore a great hero with a problem than actually try to help said hero. There were some quirks that could help, but ethics and morals came into play a lot. It caused many people to just lie about having any problems, and lying often times got people hurt.

While he had been in America, there was an incident with a female hero. She had untreated PTSD and snapped during a mission, taking her life along with the life of another hero and a villain. It wasn't her fault, if her agency, hell if _anyone_, had been willing to help her, she would probably still be here. Instead, there was a larger wedge driven in the hero community.

When Hizashi moved back to Japan, he had two semesters of college left, but it felt like an eternity. Having a professional reaffirm his suspicions about his own mental health might have been worse than just going against the grain. He was hyper aware of all of his mood changes, any time something was overwhelming he would just freak out. His usual happy go lucky personality had died away under the weight of trying to beat this illness with no help. If he got anything official, he would be screwed. He would never be a hero, though, if he was honest with himself, that was why he was in college. He couldn't be a hero. He needed a degree so he could teach. At least being a teacher, he could help the next batch of heroes, right?

At some point in his hectic life, Nemuri and Shouta had basically become his roommates. He hadn't been sure when or how, but it was nice. Nemuri was very motherly and Shouta was super logical. It was the perfect combination for when he would absolutely lose his shit during finals. Higher level classes meant more projects, and Hizashi took on too many classes. So, he lost sleep. He'd get anxious and try and finish a month long project in a weekend. He would get it done, but it cost him a lot. How his friends stayed with him was a miracle because by the end of college he could barely function. His straight A's dropped to C's because he just stopped caring. Still, he had managed to get that piece of paper that said he could teach.

That's what he had resigned himself to doing: teaching and maybe he'd pick up another DJing gig. It was fun. He needed fun. Shouta and Nemuri, though, were not too thrilled with how easily Hizashi had just given up on being a hero.

"_You know your provisional license is still good. You can finish up the National License."_

"_I don't think I can, Sho. The stress, the stigma. I.. I think I'm good. I'll just teach the newbies. It'll be fun."_

That was a lie, but it was one he was willing to live with. He liked teaching his friends English, so maybe teaching kids would be like that. It had to be, because if he didn't have teaching, he really didn't have anything. He didn't want to think about not having anything, but each day he went without a job looked more and more grim. If he had a normal brain then maybe he could be a proper adult and he could go and be this hero. He could save people and function, and not lose his shit over the dumbest thing.

A part of him wanted to finally get diagnosed and get on medication, but he knew the minute he did that he signed away any chance he would ever get of being a hero. So, he stayed unmedicated. Just living day to day. Sometimes he would be perfectly fine, just existing in his apartment with his friends. Other days he was freaking out for no real reason. He had looked it up, and apparently because he wasn't treating his illness he was slowly developing new ones. Namely anxiety and depression. He could tell it was straining his relationship with his friends, but he couldn't get diagnosed. He just couldn't, and with medication being so hard to get, he just decided to take matters into his own hands.

Energy supplements and weed eventually became Hizashi's go to once he got himself a job at a radio station. The stuff he was drinking was great, it had vitamins and all this other crap, had little sugar. It helped him focus unlike caffeine pills. At least, that's how he reasoned with himself. He'd drink the powdery drink before a show, go on for the six hours he needed to be hyped up, then go home and share a joint with his friends before sleeping. Rinse and repeat. Thankfully, his boss at the radio station let him have full reign of the show. So when the drink would make him hyperfocus on his anxiety rather than his music, he'd just queue a non stop playlist and freak out at his desk. It sucked so bad, but it paid his rent. And usually Nemuri or Shouta was out on patrol during his sets so they would bring him something to calm him down.

This new regiment went on for a couple months before Nemuri came home one night and threw a bottle of pills at him. Confused, Hizashi read the label over and over, squinting at the prescription and the name attached.

"_Concerta… Tatsuya… Nem, whose are these?"_

"_Yours."_

"_Nem, seriously."_

"_Zashi, seriously."_

That night they had a long talk about everything, how Nemuri had suffered from depression. How Shouta found the pharmacist willing to illegally help heroes. How very, very illegal the whole process was. They didn't bring it up because the process wasn't guaranteed and it involved some unsavory people. He wasn't exactly happy that they had gone behind his back with this, but they all knew if he knew he wouldn't have gone. So he was a little less mad. He didn't take the medicine immediately. It stayed untouched for about a month, just sitting on his nightstand as he decided what he was going to do. On one hand, he could be a hero. He could just lie about his mental illness and keep it pushing. On the other, he had read up on the medicine, and it was very scary. Just missing one dose could fuck him up. Missing several would put him in a bad spot. Hero work or self medication. That's what his choice boiled down to.

He couldn't pinpoint why, but one day he just decided to take the medication. It felt great. He was focusing within the hour and he wasn't drifting off to do other things. His radio show was just the right amount of hyper without going off the rails. He felt productive. It was great. He forgot to take it the next day, and while it wigged him out, he had red he hadn't been on it long enough for it to do anything. So, he started setting alarms for himself again, a habit that died off at some point. He couldn't remember why he stopped. Sleep, eat, medicine, clock in, sleep. Rinse and repeat. That's what his alarms were for. After a couple of weeks he was able to silence all of them except the one that woke him up. It was nice. Having a schedule that he could stick to.

After months of being on the medicine, he finally got the courage to go and get his National Hero License. It was scary, but his friends helped him through it. The medicine didn't help too much with his anxiety, but he wasn't really willing to fuck with more than one medicine. So he chose to deal with the anxiety by itself. Breathing helped, knowing that getting his NHL would be the best thing ever helped. When he walked out of the building with that piece of plastic, with his two friends waiting for him, he broke down in tears. He couldn't help it He had come so far because of them... because of him, too.

The months turned to two years, and Hizashi was starting to forget who that scared little boy was that he used to be. When he wasn't a hero, he was still a radio DJ. He found that working multiple jobs was the best thing for him. The more occupied he was, the better off he was. Eventually, he even decided to apply for a teaching position too. Just to add one more thing for him to do. The talk with Principal Nezu was a little intimidating if he was honest. The furry little creature might be small in stature, but he could command the attention of a room. Still, Hizashi laid out his concerns and his own demands. He wanted to be open about his condition _if_ a student had those concerns as well. He never wanted someone to suffer like he had. He wanted to change the stigma. Somehow. Nezu, surprisingly, was okay with this, so long as the student was the one who approached Hizashi with the question.

As Hizashi started to teach, and students actually approached him on how to deal with their ADHD, the Pro wanted to push the stigma more. He went to his agency with a hypothetical, a student wanted to know what to do. They laughed and he threatened to leave. Sure, he wasn't All Might or Endeavor, but he was Present Mic the DJ who brought in a decent chunk of change for his celebrity status, and money talked. They agreed on doing PSAs about ADHD, but they weren't looking to bring on a hero with the condition. It wasn't good enough, so he left. And it was a PR nightmare for the agency.

"_Dear Listeners, Present Mic just became a free agent…"_

Was it dumb to blast the agency on air? Oh yeah. Did Shouta chew him out? Fuck yeah he did. Did Hizashi feel great? Amazing. It felt so good to do things for himself, to make his own terms. Without an agency, Hizashi started to get more bold on his radio show, creating a monthly Monday show dedicated to mental health. It had its ups and downs, some people loved it, some people hated it. The radio station's ratings were up so his boss didn't care one way or another, especially when people would call in to threaten or belittle Mic. Still, he kept it pushing because if he was going to be the only advocate the he was going to be the loudest advocate.

While he never out right admitted he had an illness, everyone could figure it out. The NHL had tried to strip him of his license, but with not real concrete diagnosis they had no reason to. They gave him a firm talking to, reminded him that they were not a fan of his "shenanigans." So, Hizashi just got louder. He started selling merchandise with "Remember their names" on the front and the list of heroes that, globabally, had lost their lives to untreated mental illness. The money went to advocacy groups. He was going to make sure that if the NHL did anything stupid, it would back fire on them.

His hero work was getting choked off by the NHL, he knew it was, but he was just going to keep fighting. Principal Nezu supported his fight, so did his students. He knew how Nemuri and Shouta felt. That was all that mattered. The people that mattered about him cared, and that was enough for him to keep fighting. After the merchandise came a forum, an anonymous place for people with and without quirks to discuss mental illness. At this point, his words had spread out past the hero community in Japan. He saw users from across the globe on his site and he knew he was slowly gaining traction. Slow and steady.

His twenty sixth birthday marked his two year fight for equality, and unfortunately no heroes had really spoken on it. He understood, they didn't want to jeopardize everything, but it was still frustrating. It was a pretty standard day, outside of a little extra time spent with his best friends. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, until he got an email from All Might. He reread it at least ten times before shrieking, triggering his quirk on accident. Poor Nem and Sho, but seriously, All Might wanted to be on _his_ radio show to talk about mental health and destigmatising mental illness! They had to tell him to breathe in between his excited outbursts. He was feeling such a strange mix of emotions that he could feel the tears in his eyes. He wanted to be happy, but everything could go so wrong so quickly.

"_I admire your tenacity, Present Mic. Everything you've done for Mental Health Awareness, it's very admirable."_

Mic was speechless, but he played it cool, he had to, he was on air.

"_I appreciate that, All Might! You're the first Pro to say anything. So, seriously, I appreciate that."_

"_I want to give money to the cause. I might not understand what people are going through, but I can empathise. Let me help."_

Who knew all it took was All Might opening his checkbook for the hero world to change their minds about mental health. Suddenly it was the in thing to be pro mental health. It was a blessing and a curse, but it was better than nothing. All Might helped Hizashi with getting in with some politicians to work on legislation. They worked with getting heroes, civillains, and even villains (in custody) access to whatever it was they needed. It was slow, but needed because Hizashi was not going to let another kid suffer like he did.

A year after the All Might interview, agencies were begging for him to join them. Hizashi had gone from being a smudge on the hero community to being this shining beacon. He declined them all, uninterested in dealing with people who would drop him when mental health was no longer the cool thing. He had heard that had happened when homosexuality was still something people fought for. Heroes would be used as a token, only to be dropped when being gay or queer wasn't the in thing. No thanks, Hizashi was better off doing the independent thing. He wouldn't go full underground like Shouta, but he certainly wasn't going to an agency any time soon. No, he liked his odd hero jobs. Between teaching and the radio, he had just enough time to kick a couple of villain asses. He still had moments where worry crept up, that he would lose control and his illness would win, but that was all part of the fight. It was a long fight, and it was time people knew about it.

"_Dear listeners, as you know, I'm closing in on my fifth year at the radio station, so I thought I'd do something a little different. How about, I tell you my mental health journey."_


End file.
